Fury isn't old either chronologically or in boxing terms. He's just an unscrupulous arsehole who believes his own hype and has besmirched boxing by taking bouts unprepared.
Coming into the ring unprepared is a pretty common thing in boxing isn't it? Maybe you're more upset it happened vs an MMA guy. In Fury's defense even great ones have done it. Duran, Tyson ect..
The MMAist showed decent boxing skills throughout. His footwork was competent. His handspeed was very good. He bated Fury repeatedly into attacking him and countered him hard in exchanges when he did. He had good success fighting in the inside, too. It was obvious from the second round that it wasn't going to be the mismatch everyone thought because Ngannou looked much more comfortable in the ring than anyone expected. MTF
The real villains here are the judges. No way Fury won. Ofcourse they weren't going to give to Ngannou no matter what. Everyone is so pissed off at Fury for being so lackadaisical and rightfully so but what made boxing look bad was boxing. Corruption.
Mike knew what was up, and knew Ngannou can punch like a mule can kick. I remember Tuaman having some fun with the Superman punch, fun to mix it in when training, but I never saw it in a boxing ring, until last night that is.
Hey I get where you're coming from Tyson is/was a cokehead. My point isn't directed at anyone in particular but just from reading comments all over the internet it's easy to jump on Fury for his performance, but we shouldn't forget that there's some shady stuff going on in boxing with the judges. Ngannou getting robbed is a big deal and that's where the real problem lies. That was my only point.
Fury lost the fight. No doubt in my mind about that. I said as such during and afterwards. The cagefighter was flat out robbed. MTF
We'd have to bank on Ngannou not being able to handle a flush Wilder right hand. Possible, but what if he can? Wilder's got zero else in his bag of tricks outside that right hand, and on the inside he'd be badly outmuscled.
Let's not best around the bush. Wilder is absolutely fucking garbage. He has fight ending power in the right hand and just about enough about him to land it at least one in a fight, but other than that he is fucking shite. The current crop of HW boxers are trash. Joshua is woeful. Ruiz is a fast handed fat cunt. Fury is a faster handed, more fluid fat cunt. Wilder is a punch bag with a right hand. The best among them is a geriatric fat Chinaman and an underpowered but good quality cruiserweight. It's the absolute pits and had been for years. The only good thing about it is that they are all as equally crap as each other, so it makes for interesting, fairly equal matchups. MTF
Wilder won't come in disinterested and fat. He'll be hitting Ngannou right from the get go. None -Zero- of the kamikaze bullshit that Fury has engaged in. To get at Wilder you have to be prepared to walk through fire. He doesn't give free shots . Is he limited? Yeah. Sure.....but he acts accordingly.
Dana must be so pissed. He didn't want Francis to box because he didn't want his baddest man on the planet to look like a bum and embarrass the company. Not a good look when a boxer is toying with your champion. However if he had faith in Francis and let him do it then Francis comes back to UFC and does mega numbers and is a superstar. Bad call on Dana's part but can't blame him as nobody expected this.
How many people were ahead on the cards vs Wilder before they got KO'd? Molina, Duhapa, Washington, Ruiz x2, probably some others I forgot. Wilder is truly awful. The division is just at it's lowest point. I've been saying that for a while. Fury is garbage. Usyk is now clear number 1.
I'll address the points made by MTF later, but I truly believe you have forgotten how poor the division was 15 to 20 years ago. Back then fat Toney was unquestionably top-3. Best guys behind Wlad were Chagaev, Valuev, Ruiz and Peter, and shot-to-shit Maskaev was top-5 That era too was called the worst ever, IMO rightfully so. So was the one before that, when a joke like Michael Grant made it to top-3...
What makes an era is just not the innate quality of the fighters it's whether the big fights get made. The HW division of the 1930s and 1940s was trash.....you literally had a handful of good fighters. But they made all the fights they could. Joe Louis nearly getting iced by Billy Conn is given a romantic twist but it was trash. Conn couldn't knock out a good wank. The KLITSCHKO'S fought everyone. Lewis did too. I don't like Wlad on a personal level but he got the Haye fight made. He fought Fury. He signed off in a thriller with a Joshua. He took on Peter when he, Wlad, was a dead man walking. Lewis, likewise. It took time to get the Holy fights made but they got made. Same with the Tyson fight. The issue today is that Fury has not signed off on the one fight we all wanted to see. I don't care about who is the greatest etc. But make the fights. Don't make shit in Saudi that leaves us all the worst off.
Opposing view: Fury is not trash. Trash does not defeat even an aged Wlad in lopsided manner. And if all of them are equally trash, then how did Fury absolutely clown Whyte, who has given a tough fight to all the other craps? Fury is batshit crazy, that's what he is. When he doesn't concentrate, he tends to fuck up, but when he is on, he is good. Mind you, Joe Louis had his Galento too and was down ten times in his career. People act like Usyk's mild success proves that hw is trash. Well, he was a top-5 p4p talent according to everyone, and the size of Muhammad Ali. How is that an embarrassment to a division? Joshua was overrated, especially by me. He is a top-3 guy of this weak era. I don't see him that much worse than other similar guys, Ernie Terrell, John Ruiz or such. Andy Ruiz is crap, as you said. He got lucky against an overrated guy, bit like Michael Bennt. Bennt's short-lived success was also seen as a sign of weak division btw. And as I have said, to me criticizing Wilder for "only" KOing opponents is like criticizing a basketball player who "only" hits 3-pointers. I spoke with Helenius when he had sparred Wilder (years before their farce fight) and he told how difficult Wilder's cross is to see when you fight him, even though it looks amateurish and clumsy from ringside. He is better than he looks
Joe Louis made 20 title defences and beat virtually every person in arms reach of contention for over a decade. His record against ranked fighters is something like 30-3. Fury has beaten like 4 ranked fighters a total of six times or something.